


Explosive on a Good Day

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Minor appearances by other delinquents, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 09:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14892083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Clarke's family was incredibly generous to offer not only Clarke and Raven, but seven of Clarke's closest friends, including her maybe-ex boyfriend Bellamy, the opportunity to spend seven glorious days in lakeside paradise—it’s an opportunity that may not present itself again. Raven will not, under any circumstances, have that opportunity ruined by two fuming exes bickering and sniping at each other the whole time. She will not. Even if she has to lock Clarke in her own room, she will not.Or: The delinquents scheme to keep recent exes Bellamy and Clarke apart while they enjoy summer vacation at the lake.





	Explosive on a Good Day

Raven is lying on her back on the living room floor, her laptop propped up against her bent knees, scrolling through the most beautiful, the most gut-wrenchingly stunning scenery porn she has ever seen in her life, when the apartment door scrapes open and then abruptly slams shut.

_Uh-oh, Clarke's home._

That wouldn't be a bad thing at all, except for the door slam and the hurried sound of feet trying not to outright _stomp_ into the kitchen. Raven flicks her eyes up from the screen, then flicks them back down again. Clarke is pouring water into the electric kettle. But she's not saying anything, and Raven wants just a few more moments of peace with these absolutely filthy pictures of dazzling blue lake water, tall majestic pine trees, stately three-story wooden houses right on the shore—she _wants them_. She wants to reach her hands right through the screen and grab them.

Now Clarke's clanking around in the cupboard looking for a mug. Oh, she's grabbed the big one. And now she's pulling down the tea from the back of the top cupboard. Clarke only drinks tea when she needs to calm herself down, like all the way down from peak annoyance levels, and by now Raven’s trained to feel a shiver of wariness every time she sees the box of English Breakfast appear.

Raven scrolls down to a shot of the dock, extending out into the water, basically just outright inviting her to sit on the end of it with her legs dangling down into the lake, maybe right before or right after she takes out one of those canoes for a spin...

This is unfair. Abby was only trying to be nice sending her these pictures, but she has to wait another twenty-four hours before she can actually set foot on the esteemed Griffin family summer property known enigmatically as The Ark. She can almost taste the sweet warm air, can almost _feel_ the whispering forest breeze against her skin.

Clarke pulls out one of the teabags, rips open the packaging like she's ripping off some especially obnoxious underling's head, and throws the bag into her mug with a scowl.

"I just—I can't _believe_ him, sometimes, you know?"

Raven sighs. _Guess that means she's ready to talk._ She mentally squares her shoulders, adjusts her pillow beneath her head, and tilts down her laptop screen. "Boyfriend trouble?"

Clarke rolls her eyes and scoffs, hard. "Huh. Right. Hardly."

 _Hardly?_ Raven's brow furrows, but she's all the way down on the floor and Clarke's pouring now-boiling water into her mug and doesn't notice.

"So this isn't about Bellamy?"

"Oh, no, it's about Bellamy," Clarke answers, as she sets the kettle back on its base. "I was over at his place, helping him pack, and we got to talking about the best routes up to The Ark tomorrow." She picks her mug up gingerly, circles around the kitchen island, and climbs up onto one of the stools facing out into the living room. "And then this completely civil discussion just rockets into an argument, like that." She snaps her fingers. "He thinks that just because he's done the whole cross-country road trip thing— _once_ —that he knows better how to get somewhere I've only been going to every year my whole life. He's so arrogant. So full of himself. And so...so _stubborn_." She sets her mug down a little too hard, and a few drops of hot liquid splash out over her hand. Clarke barely seems to notice, but Raven winces.

Clarke is one of her dearest friends, has been since they first met, three years ago, at the start of freshmen orientation, and they've been the best of roommates for the last nine months, but still, Raven can't help thinking that ‘arrogant,’ ‘full of herself,’ and ‘stubborn’ also occasionally describe someone other than Bellamy pretty darn well. Not that she'd say so aloud. At least, not when Clarke is in a bad mood and has a mug of scalding tea at her disposal.

"Right," she says instead, slowly. "He can occasionally be those things. He likes to dig his heels in when he's challenged."

"Exactly!"

"So I take it you didn't reach a compromise...?"

Clarke snorts. "As if I could compromise with that jackass."

 _Jackass_ is a pretty strong word, and a tendril of uncertainty starts to unfurl in Raven's gut, the same uncertainty first planted by the word _hardly_ a few moments before. Clarke and Bellamy have always been volatile. They fought during orientation, and all through freshman fall semester, and even if by spring their spats had started to sound more like good-natured banter, there's always been something of the ticking time bomb about them. At first, Raven thought it was just sexual tension, and that it would break when they finally hooked up. But they've been dating since last winter, almost six months now, and they still get into the sort of passionate, raging, verbal knock-down drag-outs that make everyone around them damn near explode from the tension of the room. It doesn't happen often. And they always make up after, sometimes so quickly that Raven's head spins trying to follow—and very few phenomena make Raven Reyes's head spin—but still, she's been asking herself for a while now, will the next fight be _the_ fight?

Now she's asking herself: _was the_ **_last_ ** _fight_ **_the_ ** _fight, and if so, what does this mean for our lakeside getaway?_

That's probably selfish, but those big beautiful cabins are calling to her. Maybe someday she'll work her way up into millionaire status and then she’ll buy all of the lakefront property her heart desires, but probably not, and until then she can only dream about even a week at a place as lush and idyllic as The Ark. And Clarke's family was incredibly generous to offer not only Clarke and Raven, but seven of Clarke's closest friends, including her maybe-ex boyfriend Bellamy, the opportunity to spend seven glorious days in lakeside paradise—it’s an opportunity that may not present itself again. Raven will not, under any circumstances, have that opportunity ruined by two fuming exes bickering and sniping at each other the whole time. She will not. Even if she has to lock Clarke in her own room, she will not.

"Did you win?" she asks. "The argument, I mean." She's trying to keep her voice light and airy with friendly curiosity, but really she's meticulously gathering clues.

"What?" Clarke looks up from her tea, which she'd been staring into with the concentration of a mystic. She hesitates, then: "Oh, no. Not yet. He's driving the guys up tomorrow using his route, and I'm driving us and the girls up using mine and then I'll declare victory."

"That means he's still coming, then?"

Clarke frowns, and slowly slides off the stool to her feet. "Yeah," she answers, like it's obvious. "Of course he is. I'm going to my room. Um—there's nothing in the fridge so take out for dinner tonight?"

Raven nods—“Sure"—but her mind’s already moving on ahead. Interesting. Clarke wanting some alone time pushes her even more to the conclusion that she's just witnessed the immediate aftermath of a passionate but unstable relationship, and yes, she does feel a bit sad. She was rooting for those crazy kids. When they weren't bickering over campus politics or pizza toppings or interpretations of famous paintings, or whatever, they seemed pretty happy. Almost disgustingly happy, actually.

Truly the end of an era.

When she hears the click of Clarke's bedroom door closing, she immediately slides her laptop onto the floor and digs her phone out of the pocket of her jeans. She could text but there's no time. No, this sort of summer-vacation emergency demands a direct phone conversation, it demands immediate and unqualified scheming, and it demands one particular nefarious accomplice.

It demands John Murphy.

*

When Murphy returns home, he finds Bellamy in the kitchen, standing watch, mad scientist style, over some bubbling red mass on the stove. This is not a good sign. Considering that when Murphy left, Bellamy and Clarke were happily sorting out summer vacation supplies from the more mundane crap of day-to-day life, and now Bellamy's muttering vaguely about how she's just so _defensive_ , and he was only making a _suggestion_ , _okay_ , Murphy has some idea what this turnaround is all about.

"Trouble in paradise?" he asks mildly, as he heads toward the fridge.

"Shut up, Murphy."

"Will do."

He really only came into the kitchen to get a drink. In his experience it's better not to wade into his friends' drama, even if half the time they pull him into the deep end of it anyway.

He's heading down the hall to his room when his phone starts buzzing in his pocket. Not the two-short-buzzes of a text alert, but the sustained rattling of a good old-fashioned telephone call. Bizarre. He transfers his water to his left hand and fishes out his phone with his right.

_Reyes._

Anyone else and he'd probably hit the big ol' red dismiss button, but he'll make an exception for her, and not least because if she of all people is trying to talk to him directly, it must be some sort of emergency. He hits accept.

"Reyes, what's the—"

"Mayday."

She's doing the faux-whisper thing. The corner of Murphy's mouth quirks up.

"Clarke just made tea."

This sounds like it must be a euphemism for something, but unfortunately, he's come into enough knowledge about Clarke to understand that it's not. Just a sign of some sort of four-alarm fire in her mood. He hums knowingly. "Bellamy's cooking."

This news seems to stop Raven up short, and she’s distracted enough to ask, "You actually have food at your place to cook with? This close to vacation?"

"No, not really. He's just pulling random shit off the shelves and adding it to some weird-smelling stir fry." He balances his phone against his shoulder and shoves open the door to his room. "Obviously they had a fight."

"Obviously. But I think it's worse than that. I think it's _the_ fight."

" _The_ fight?" he echoes. "The relationship a-bomb?"

"Yeah. The now-we're-friends-with-exes fight."

That's a strong accusation, and Murphy's eyebrows rise. He sits down in his desk chair, sets his glass down on the table, and leans back. "Are you sure?"

"Fairly. You think Bellamy would waste time on kitchen-sink-stir-fry if they weren't broken up?"

"Good point. Does this mean our week at The Ark is off?"

Raven makes a disagreeing sound, and he pictures her shaking her head. "No, Clarke says Bellamy is still coming so the rest of us definitely are. But you know what putting an ex-boyfriend and an ex-girlfriend together in the same enclosed space does. Causes disaster."

"Especially Blake and Griffin," he agrees. "Explosive on a good day."

"Right."

Murphy twirls his glass of water around in his fingers, watching the light from the window catch and gleam on its surface. "I sense a scheme coming on," he says.

This time Raven hums, the sort of slow-building drone of noise that signifies her genius-brain is firing away. This is his favorite Raven. He's almost excited, because yeah, seven days at some fancy waterfront rich-person bunker is an all right proposition, but it's the sort of thing that will probably get boring after about twenty-four hours. He can't say no to having something to do.

"Basically, we just need to keep them apart," Raven's saying. "Which won't be easy, since there will only be nine of us in two cabins and we'll probably be doing a lot of stuff as a group. But they _cannot_ interact. They need to be distracted at all times."

"Sounds like you're suggesting we babysit them." Which seems like it might be a little less fun.

"Sort of. We just need to…supervise them," Raven corrects. "Twenty-four-hour protective supervision. It's for the good of the group."

Murphy snorts and rolls his eyes, tipping so far back in his chair that it threatens to topple to the ground. "I guess I'm in," he deadpans. "You know how I love to do things for the good of the group."

*

By the time they pull off the main road and onto the dirt track that leads to The Ark, Raven is in a glorious, buoyant, damn near _joyous_ mood. She cannot entirely pinpoint its source. It's the sun glinting emerald-gold through the tree leaves. It's the bump and sway of the car's wheels over the uneven, unpaved path. It's the crystalline blue of the sky and the tall stacks of impeccable white clouds, scaling up and up over each other in fluffy, white, majestic bursts. It's the 90's girl-pop nostalgia playlist they have blasting out the windows, and the silly impromptu singalongs they got into on the highway. It's the way they keep dancing in their seats and laughing and making jokes, and it's knowing, in the midst of all this, that she's been successful in keeping her best friend from thinking too much about this whole recent-breakup thing. Clarke is grinning as she takes the wide turn that brings them into sight of the cabins. Her hair, golden-white in the warm June sun, falls freely over her shoulders, and she looks just about as happy as Raven's ever seen her.

They have not spoken about Bellamy once the whole trip.

Of course, avoiding the prickly topic of the ex is going to be more difficult when he's living right next door, but that's why Raven, and her trusty accomplice Murphy, have enlisted the help of all five of their friends in keeping the dynamite former-lovers apart. Everyone jumped on board with the plan fairly quickly. She's not sure what it says about her friends, or about her, that they needed so little convincing to join in on Operation Supervised Separation, but that's a concern for another day.

Clarke parks the car in a patch of dirt between the two cabins, and Raven clambers down from the passenger seat. Maya and Octavia are already slamming the back doors shut and heading around to the trunk to grab their bags. Raven takes a moment, though, to tilt her head all the way back and look at the sky. A soft breeze rustles through the topmost leaves of the trees. When she looks to her right, she can just make out the edge of the lake, sparkling, gleaming like a hidden jewel at the bottom of the easy slope of the hill.

She hauls her own bag out of the trunk, slams it shut, and follows the other three up to the cabin. Clarke has been calling the two buildings 'cabins' since she first brought up the possibility of a post-spring-semester retreat, but seeing them in person, Raven begins to doubt the appropriateness of the name. They're each three stories tall and could easily house their group twice over; the living room of the girls' cabin is bigger than Clarke and Raven's apartment, and the kitchen leads off to a long rectangular dining room with a table big enough for twenty. The furnishings are rustic and simple—a few overstuffed couches, a few mismatched chairs, a bookshelf filled with paperbacks and well-worn board game boxes—but Raven's as stunned as if she'd wandered into a medieval castle. She wanders through the downstairs in a trance, then joins up with the girls in the living room, where she lets her bag fall with a soft thud to the floor.

"What do you think?" Clarke asks her, with a sneaky little grin like she doesn't _already fucking know_.

"I think this is going to be the best week ever.”

As Octavia and Maya head upstairs to claim their rooms, Raven walks out to the wraparound porch and surveys her new kingdom. The land slants down gently from the house to the shore, vegetation and a few tall, thin trees giving way to a narrow beach and then the dock and the lake, and beyond that, a ring of mountains that cuts off their little paradise from the rest of the world. "I'm really glad we decided to do this," she says, when she hears the screen door screech open behind her. It closes with a slow whine and a thump, and soon Clarke’s standing side by side with Raven, leaning out over the porch railing and taking in, breathing in, the pure unfiltered beauty of the day.

"Me too," Clarke answers. Her voice sounds wistful and soft. Maybe a touch sad. Raven considers reaching out and giving her forearm a reassuring squeeze but before she can, the sounds of crunching wheels out back and an engine abruptly cutting off disturb the stillness, and they both turn, instinctively, toward the noise.

"I think the boys are here," Raven says.

Clarke's eyes narrow. She looks down at her watch. "Eleven and a half minutes after us," she answers. "Making me officially right. Excuse me, Raven, I have some gloating to do—"

"Wait." Raven reaches out and grabs for her arm, urgent this time, and arrests Clarke's movement so quickly that she spins on her heel, yanked back like a yo-yo from her vengeful mission. She lifts her brows. Raven bites her lip. "Wait," she says again, her brain spinning as Clarke's expression inches farther away from confused, and closer to _annoyed_. "Gloat later. There's no time now."

"No time to gloat but time to stare at the view?"

"Yeah, because we've done that, and now you have to show me the bedrooms. Help me pick the right one."

"They're all mostly the same—"

"I know that's not true. Come on." She links her arm through Clarke's and takes her back into the main room. From here she can make out the echo of slamming car doors and boots racing up wooden stairs off to their right. Clarke almost veers out of her grasp as they pass by the back door, but Raven holds on, picks up her bag on the way, and drags Clarke with her to the stairs. "It's really important to me to have a good view, and also what's the sound situation like? Do I need to avoid sharing a wall with anyone or is it okay to have a neighbor? How many bedrooms are there anyway?"

"Raven, I really don't think you need my—"

"Yes, I do. Let's go. This can't wait."

*

Miller snags the corner bedroom, the one with two windows both almost completely obscured by the wafting branches of full-leafed trees, and then heads back down the hall and toward the stairs. He has never been so glad to get out of a car in his _life_ . Five college guys shoved into one ancient old vehicle on a three-hour trek along an unknown route is not, surprisingly enough, super fun. At least he was riding shotgun and not stuffed in the back like Jasper, Monty, and Murphy were. He did have to navigate, though, and contend with Bellamy's occasionally scarily tense desire to ‘make good time’ ( _practicing your dad impression?_ Jasper asked at one point, and Bellamy had all but thrown his empty coffee cup at him), but they only almost got lost once. Emphasis on _almost_ and _once_.

Clarke's car was already parked by the left-side cabin when they pulled up, though, which put Bellamy off. He uttered a few choice swear words and loudly slammed the driver's side door when he climbed out. Still, Miller reminds himself, as he turns onto the staircase, it could be worse. During the easy stretches on the highway, Bellamy had joked along with the rest of them, made plans to go boating with Monty and given input into Murphy and Jasper's cooking plans, and generally seemed as infected as the rest of them with that light, free, airy sense of abandon that comes with the end of exams, the end of the year, and the start of vacation. In other words, he didn't seem too torn up over the whole break-up thing.

And that's how his mood will stay, if Miller has anything to say about it. Standard best friend duties and all.

When he gets to the bend in the staircase, he catches sight of Bellamy and his sister below, and immediately ducks out of sight. He peeks around the corner carefully. He's too far away to hear what they're saying, but he can tell from the way Octavia has her hands on Bellamy's shoulders and the somber, damn near grave look on her face that this is a serious discussion. Probably talking to him about Clarke. Which is exactly what she’s not supposed to be doing, but siblings will be siblings—he's an only child and doesn't even pretend he knows what's happening with the Blakes ninety percent of the time.

Bellamy takes her hands from his shoulders, put his on hers instead, and says something low and quiet. But when he steps away, he almost looks like he's smiling, weirdly enough: the weary and confused smile of someone who's just seen the joke in a catastrophe. Octavia throws up her hands, points her finger at him briefly, says something else Miller can’t hear, and then half-jogs toward the door.

When he hears it close behind her, Miller finishes his walk down the stairs.

"Who was that?" he asks, lightly, as if he didn't know.

"What?" Bellamy turns, distracted, and runs a hand through his hair. “Oh, um, Octavia. She stopped in to talk about dinner. Then—this was so weird—she mentioned she was going on a hike and when I said I'd like to come too, she freaked out."

"Freaked out?"

"Yeah, O's version of it. She just got really tense and confused, like she'd said something she wasn't supposed to. Then she got really serious and said it would be better if I stayed here.” He shrugs. “It didn’t make any sense at all.”

Miller nods along, as if this were a totally normal story and Octavia hadn't just come within a hair's breadth of blowing the whole plan. They haven't even been at The Ark for an hour. That girl thinks she is so much sneakier than she actually is.

As lightly as he can, he asks, “Is Clarke going…?”

Bellamy lifts one shoulder briefly. Even for Miller, who prides himself on inscrutable gestures, this is particularly opaque. “I guess so?”

"Then…” Miller tries again. “It's probably better you sit this one out, right?"

He feels like he’s trying to defuse a bomb. The situation is _that_ tense. At least he’s pretty sure, from the way Bellamy is nodding along slowly, that he’s got the situation under control—until he realizes Bellamy is nodding because he isn’t really paying attention. He’s thinking about something else. Then his attention snaps to Miller again and he says:

"Oh, no, I'm going."

" _What_?"

Fuck. Stupid him for thinking Octavia had actually managed to clean up her own mess. Bellamy's already walked right past him and is starting up the stairs—"Just gotta change first"—when Miller calls out, "Wait!" and he stops, one hand on the newel post, and looks back. He's giving Miller a strange look that is probably directly proportional to the unfounded urgency in his voice.

"Dinner," he says, uselessly. It's the first thing that pops into his head.

"Dinner," Bellamy repeats.

"Yeah. We're hosting the first night, right? We need to go shopping. We need to head into town."

"Murphy and Jasper can do that. I just spent three hours behind the wheel, I don't need to spend any more time sitting—"

"Yeah, but if they go by themselves they'll get distracted."

"Murphy and Jasper?" Bellamy's face grows three shades more skeptical. "I think you're mistaking them for Jasper and Monty." He starts up the stairs again, and gets almost to the turn before Miller stops him again.

"Do you really trust either of them with your car, though?"

Bellamy pauses. Thinks on that a long moment. Sighs. And then reluctantly stomps down the stairs again.

*

Keeping the embittered exes separate becomes more challenging when the girls head next door for group dinner, but the gang rises admirably to the occasion. Clarke is so exhausted from her brutal hike with Octavia that she immediately collapses, jelly-like, into the nearest couch, where it's easy for Raven and Monty to keep her occupied. They mostly talk tech and computer stuff, but Clarke doesn't seem to mind. She just flicks her eyes back and forth from one speaker to the next, as if blearily enjoying the rhythm of their voices, and doesn't ask many questions.

Octavia hooks her laptop up to Miller's speakers and blasts her music loud enough to obscure any noise that might otherwise leak out from the kitchen, where Murphy and Jasper have employed Bellamy as their unofficial taste-tester. Murphy takes the lead on the actual cooking, while Jasper darts around the room, bringing Bellamy sample after sample, and ensuring he doesn't get any big ideas about wandering out into the main part of the house. At one point, he literally blocks Bellamy's way out the door, holding out a ladle-full of 'special sauce' and wiggling his eyebrows until Bellamy relents and tries a bit—even though, as he says, "at this rate I'll be too full to eat any actual dinner."

Of course, there's no way to keep the two in separate rooms once the food is ready, and so a new difficulty arises. Bellamy gets to the dining room first, and grabs the rightmost seat facing the window. Clarke, still stumbling a little on her overtaxed legs, enters after. She seems like she's on a trajectory to the seat right next to his, but Maya grabs her arm, a just-so last minute save, and steers her to the opposite end of the table. She then proceeds to talk Clarke's ear off for the rest of the meal, getting her going on topics like the latest exhibit at the campus museum and inscrutable Art History department gossip. Once, over Clarke's shoulder, Raven's able to catch Maya's eye and give her an approving nod, and Maya winks back at her. She's fairly new to the friend group but she loves a good scheme, and it's nice, she'll admit, to feel welcomed.

Once the dishes have been cleared and set in the sink, where they’ll be completely ignored until morning, Jasper and Monty grab some marshmallows and graham crackers and chocolate and suggest, to no real protest at all, that they head down to the beach, light a bonfire, and make some s'mores. Dinner was such a languid and slow affair that even the summer sun has all but sunken and the clear purple light of late twilight has washed over the shore. Miller and Bellamy get a fire going, and Octavia collects some appropriately sized marshmallow-toasting sticks. A calm, relaxed vibe settles over the group. Raven feels young, perhaps not even the full measure of her years, and carefree and light: like she exists in only this moment, like she's found the peaceful center of the world, and now she's balanced within it, every fine point of creation aligned.

In other words, she's stopped paying much attention to her friends and their drama. She's dropped her guard entirely.

She and Jasper are midway through a marshmallow-toasting competition that she is totally winning, when she hears an unexpected shout off to her right.

"Hey, Blake!"

She snaps her gaze away from the hypnotic dance of flames just in time to see Clarke pull her hand out of the bag of marshmallows and throw one fluffy white blob at the back of Bellamy's head. It bounces off his shoulder and he turns, the brief jolt of pure surprise on his face shading immediately into a scowl, fierce and angry in the orange fire-glow.

"What the fuck, princess, what was that—"

"Hey."

Monty jumps between them, jumps right into the line of fire, in fact, and Raven is absolutely certain that he has no plan at all for what to do next. But at least he seems to have disrupted whatever shit Clarke was trying to start.

"Don't waste those," he says, after an excruciatingly long two-and-a-half-seconds of confused silence, and grabs the bag out of Clarke's hand. "That's our whole supply."

 _Liar_ , Raven thinks. She hears the way Jasper scoffs under his breath. Like they’d ever go on a vacation to the woods with an insufficient stock of marshmallows. Doesn't matter. Clarke gives up her ammo, making a sound somewhere between a huff and a sigh, probably paired with a deep roll of the eyes. Then she grabs a stick from Octavia and a marshmallow from Monty, and takes up a post next to Jasper by the fire.

Neither Raven, nor anyone else, notices the way she eyes Bellamy over the flames.

*

The boys show up early the next morning and breakfast becomes a crowded affair. Just to get from the fridge to the cabinet to the table requires precise, choreographed movements, almost a dance--a well-timed slide here, a last-minute pirouette there--Raven holding her glass of orange juice high above her head as she goes—and before long Octavia and Monty really are dancing, to Octavia's off-key rendition of one of the 90s pop nostalgia hits from the girls’ car ride the day before. They almost bump into Miller as he brews a pot of coffee, but luckily avoid Jasper, who's standing at the stove making pancakes.

Maya places a large bowl of berries, summer-ripe and picture-perfect, in the center of the table. Murphy finds an unopened bottle of syrup in the cupboard, and sets it down next to the stack of slightly chipped blue plates, just waiting for Jasper's oddly sized creations.

Raven's still a little bleary eyed but her feet are bare and the sun is shining, mild and warm, through the window and she slept _so well_ last night, and she's happy. She looks around at her friends and she's really—she's truly content. Miller with his hands wrapped around his coffee mug, Murphy and Maya helping Jasper with his pancake assembly line, Octavia picking a blueberry from the top of the berry bowl with sneaky fingers, Monty collecting forks from the drawer by the sink.

Miller, Murphy, Maya, Jasper, Octavia, Monty.

And herself.

But not—

"Guys, have any of you seen Clarke?" she asks, sitting up straight and alert, her eyes darting across the room as if, somehow, she'd missed them lurking quietly in one of the corners. As if they were hiding behind her, watching from just inside the door. "Or Bellamy?"

Her voice is clear and a little too loud, tinged with alarm.

Slowly, the others look from face to face, taking their own inventories.

"I thought Clarke was still asleep," Maya says, at last, breaking the long, uncertain pause.

Raven shakes her head slowly.

"I'm pretty sure Bellamy's still back at the cabin," Miller adds.

"I think you're right," Raven murmurs. She pushes her chair back. The scrape and screech of it against the floor is the only sound. "And I don't think he's alone."

*

Clarke zips down the front porch steps and around the side of the cabin, the crisp morning air sending chills up her bare arms and legs, and then up to the back door of the boys' cabin, and inside. She leaves her slippers at the bottom of the stairs, and climbs up stealthily on quiet, bare feet. Bellamy's room is directly across from the top step. She approaches it slowly, twists the doorknob and pushes it open with her fingertips.

Bellamy is standing by the window, his back to her. His hair is still mussed and unkempt from sleep, and like her, he's still wearing his pajamas and has nothing on his feet.

"Your cabin is awfully quiet," Clarke says, and he turns around, catches sight of her, and smiles.

"I think that's because everyone's over at yours," he answers.

"Mmhmm. For breakfast."

"Which means we have the place to ourselves."

“Which means we have the place _all_ to ourselves."

As they speak, Clarke creeps closer and closer, approaching him with measured and careful steps until, at last, she's close enough for him to wraps his arms around her waist and pull her forward, close enough for her to drape her arms over his shoulders, close enough to kiss.

And they do. They kiss as if they'd been separated for months instead of hours: a deep and breath-catching kiss, Clarke up on her toes with her fingers in his hair, Bellamy's hands grasping at the thin cotton of her shirt. After a few moments, though, the kiss starts to break up, as if interrupted by static, starts to become a series of smaller kisses punctuated by slight breathless giggles, both of them laughing at some joke only they two can hear. Then Bellamy, moved, apparently, by some private surge of affection and light-hearted desire, picks Clarke right up off her feet with no warning at all—she shrieks, excited, and her giggles turn into full and happy laughter—twirls her around, and sets her down again on the window seat. Her laughter tapers off. What's left is a warm, fond, private smile.

Bellamy takes a step closer and leans in again.

As their lips meet once more, Clarke hooks her ankles around the back of his legs and tangles her fingers in the fabric of his shirt, just above the waist of his pajama pants, as if she wanted to tug him closer still, as if she could.

"So," Bellamy murmurs between kisses, "when are we going to tell them?"

"Tell them what?" Clarke whispers back, as if she didn't know. As if she and Bellamy hadn't spent the last thirty-six hours secretly joking about their friends' little scheme, as if that scheme hadn't been known to her from the moment Raven decided to call Murphy while standing in the middle of an apartment with notoriously open acoustics, as if Clarke hadn't overheard the whole thing, and gotten Bellamy up to speed within hours.

"Tell them that we didn't break up?" she continues, pressing a few stray kisses against his cheek and jaw. "Mmm—never. Let them figure it out."

Bellamy draws back, the corners of his eyes crinkling as a suspicious look dawns across his face. "You want to make them suffer indefinitely? You're a little bit evil, aren't you?"

"Just a little." She kisses his nose. "It's their fault anyway, for treating one little fight like it was the end of the world. One little fight that I definitely won, by the way." She grins, and jerks Bellamy closer when he leans back and tries to argue:

"Okay, but it wasn't an entirely fair contest because you got a head start. I had to go all the way across town to pick up Jasper and M—"

"Bellamy." Clarke covers his hand with her mouth and looks up at him, steel-gazed and serious. "I won. Just admit it." She holds for a beat, waiting for him to try to argue again, then lets her hand drop down and adds, "You can win next time."

The corner of his mouth lifts up, a half-smile. "That a promise?" he asks.

"Yeah." Another light kiss, another smile as lips meet lips.

"I'm holding you to it."

And another.

"Go ahead."

And again, this one too long, the intensity of it slowly creeping up and through them both, to be interrupted by any more silly, quiet words. Clarke's hands slide up under Bellamy's shirt, and after a moment, he gets the hint, and pulls back just long enough to yank it off and throw it to the floor. Clarke grins. Bellamy grabs her by the hips and pulls her closer, so close against him she almost falls off the ledge; her legs wrap around his legs and her hands splay against bare skin, and she's just started to kiss along the underside of his jaw—too distracted, too entranced by him to even notice the clatter of footsteps on the stairs—when the bedroom door slams open with a gunshot bang and she and Bellamy both startle just about out of their skin.

Clarke loses her balance, and her feet fall to the floor. But she keeps her arms around Bellamy, and he keeps his around her, just the same.

In the doorway, all seven of their friends are crowded together, Raven, Murphy, Miller, Jasper, Monty, Octavia, and Maya, staring at them with expressions ranging from surprised to shocked to embarrassed to—almost, and increasingly—amused.

Maya hides a smile behind her hand.

"Well, this is a surprise," Monty deadpans.

"Is it, though?" Miller asks, as he crosses his arms against his chest and hits them with a judgmental eyebrow raise.

But it's Raven who seems the most stricken, Raven who's watching them with her mouth slightly open, Raven who asks, "Clarke...?" in a faint and distant voice, and cannot seem to bring herself to say more.

"I know what this looks like," Clarke tells her. For just a few words she sounds almost embarrassed, almost apologetic. Then, abruptly, she doesn’t, at all. "And that's exactly what it is. But Raven,” she grins, “in my defense, Bellamy is _really_ hot"—she gestures to him, hands out like she's presenting him as evidence, and Bellamy just gives a faux-modest shrug and bites back a smirk—"and you left us all alone and unsupervised. What did you think was going to happen?”

Murphy elbows Raven in the side. “Yeah, Reyes, what did we think was going to happen?”

She elbows him back, harder (perhaps with a very quiet _traitor_ muttered under her breath), and then just rolls her eyes at herself. “Well—not this. But it’s good to have you back, anyway. So…I think there’s still some pancakes left if you want breakfast….?”

Bellamy and Clarke exchange a quick glance, then shake their heads. “Actually,” Clarke answers, “I think we’ll take a rain check on this one.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the BFF Writing Team, for the prompt: "In my defence, Bellamy's hot and I was left unsupervised."
> 
> Thank you for reading! Comments and feedback are always appreciated and replied to and you can also find me on [tumblr](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/).


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